A Big Impact! Communicating Good Driving Etiquette To Your Kids

Being involved in an automobile accident can have a significant impact on your family. While we pray it will never happen to us, there is a chance that you will get in some kind of collision in your life. According to car insurance companies, you will approximately file a claim on a collision once every 17.9 years, but that doesn’t include when you’re traveling in someone else’s car. The impact it can have on a family can be devastating, and while driving is an essential part of our lives now, there are things we can do to cut back on the potential for car accidents.

Teaching Safety

“Safety” is a boring word for most kids, but the amount of children that don’t put their seatbelt on is a staggering amount. In spite of the amount of commercials on the dangers of not wearing your seatbelt, a lot of parents and kids choose to ignore the advice. You need to teach your children the safety of belting up before the car moves an inch. Something as minor as having to break suddenly at a slow speed can cause injuries. Make sure that everyone knows the value of being safe in a moving vehicle.

Being Aware On The Road

For parents, there are a million distractions inside the car, let alone on the road! You need to be aware of all possible dangers. If you ever get caught up in an incident, your awareness will be one of your best assets, and there are still plenty of people who don’t know what to do after a car accident, you could very likely be charged for negligent driving if you’re not careful. Making sure that you were fully concentrating on the road in the first place will help to get you out of potential trouble. If you weren’t concentrating, it could cost you a lot more than a financial payout.

Understand How It Can Affect A Child

Emotionally, this is something that can have a lifelong impact. It could have a big effect on your relationship with your child, and it can cause problems that may take decades to recover from. If you have ever been in an automobile accident, the important thing is to not “get back on the horse” right away, but to make a gradual return to driving, for you and for your child’s benefit because they will need to learn good driving habits too. With any traumatic incident that we go through in life, no matter how small, it can really have an impact on our children. We need to be understanding and help them, because it may have impacted them more than we realize. Talk to your child and see if there’s anything you can do to help, and try and minimize any triggers of that painful memory where you can.

It is a fact of life that lots of us need to drive to get anywhere, so be safe, and be aware, and make sure everyone in your family is aware too!